TechNote (Archived)

Searching the Contents of PDF Files on a Web Site

What's Covered

Find and Search Commands in Acrobat

Third-Party Search Engines

Adobe PDF IFilter (Windows Only)

While Adobe Acrobat and other Adobe products enable you to create Adobe PDF files that are optimal for posting on a Web site, Adobe Systems doesn't make a search engine that enables you to search the contents of all PDF files on a Web site. Therefore, you can't search the contents of a site's PDF files the same way you can search a site's HTML pages using a Web search engine (such as Hotbot or Yahoo). To search the contents of PDF files on a Web site, you can use Acrobat's Find and Search commands on individual PDF files as you view them, use a third-party PDF search engine, or use the Adobe PDF IFilter plug-in for Microsoft Index Server.

Find and Search Commandsin Acrobat

The Search command in Acrobat 6.0 combines the functions of the Find and Search commands in Acrobat 5.x. In addition, the Search command in Acrobat 6.0 enables you to search for PDF files on the Internet with the Google search engine. Internet searches, however, don't enable you to search for text within individual PDF files on a Web site.

In Acrobat 5.x, the Find and Search commands function as follows:

-- The Find command lets you search within a PDF file you view, whether the PDF file is on your hard disk or on a Web page.

-- The Search command lets you search multiple PDF files by checking information in index files created in Acrobat Catalog. Index files and the Search command cannot be used within Web browsers--the search query is performed by the Search plug-in on your local computer, and the plug-in can search only local index files and their associated PDF files.

Third-Party Search Engines

A variety of third-party Web search engines are available, many of which can search PDF files on a Web site. For information about third-party search engines that support PDF, visit Search Tools' Web site at www.searchtools.com/info/pdf.html , and view the list under PDF-Compatible Site Search Tools.

Adobe PDF IFilter (Windows Only)

The Adobe PDF IFilter plug-in enables you to index PDF files in your site in Microsoft Index Server, so visitors to the site can search for text within the PDF files. By default, Index Server can search only HTML and *.doc files. To enable it to search files in other formats, Microsoft distributes filter specifications that let other developers create filter plug-ins. Adobe has used these specifications to create the PDF IFilter specifically for searching PDF files.

You can download PDF IFilter 5.0 for free from Adobe's Web site at www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=1&platform=Windows .

Adobe strongly recommends that you read the PDF IFilter ReadMe file before using the PDF IFilter plug-in, as limited documentation is available for this plug-in and its installation process. Adobe Technical Support has encountered problems with PDF IFilter and some configurations of Index Server. For information on setting up Index Server to use PDF IFilter or any plug-in, refer to the Index Server documentation.